Dagmar Němcová

* 1930

  • "I experienced the bombing when I was 14 years old, so my father put me to work as a seamstress. He said, 'Don't let them remember you, so they don't put you somewhere.' Because they were putting even the 15-year-olds in factories or somewhere. So he put me with a seamstress at Masaryk. And there was an alarm, so we had to go down to the basement, where there was gas, water, everything. So we stood by the door so we could run if something burst. And next door, a bomb went off in that house, where the stationery and shoe store is now. The house was bombed. I don't remember the number, I just know it's a stationery and shoe store now. We were right next to that house, and when the bomb fell, we at least ran into the hallway. And what I thought was to run home. So I ran out of the house and ran home. Twice they caught me, they were going to put me in the basement, but I was like crazy and I said, 'I'm not going anywhere, I've already had the bombing. So I ran home. And at home they yelled at me that something could have happened to me."

  • "An old lady, a German, lived next door to us. She had a daughter, and the daughter had an SS [husband]. And this lady, I don't know her name, I don't remember, sometimes she came in the evening. She stayed with the daughter during the whole day, and in the evening she came to her apartment and she liked to knock and talk to my mother. Sometimes she'd come in all freaked out and say, 'Mrs. Kuglerová, if you only knew what's going on with this nation! I'm German, but I grew up here. Imagine how much people are denouncing people. And when my son-in-law isn't home, my daughter and I cancel. We destroy the denunciation so that it doesn't go through.' Those were such experiences of the occupation."

  • "Mum used to go to friends' houses in London to listen, she always went in the evening. And dad would say, 'Please be careful, don't let anyone see you. You know there are three SS men living in this house! So mum would sneak away quietly so no one would see her. Next to the people in question, where she went to listen to the radio, there was also a German, an SS man, and every time he was supposed to be home, the neighbour, who was Czech, would knock and say, 'Please, don't listen to the radio today, my husband is at home.'"

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    Brno, 10.02.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 01:10:49
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
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When the sirens started blaring, I was so worried about where the bombs were going to fall

Dagmar Nemcova, 1970
Dagmar Nemcova, 1970
photo: Archive of the witness

Dagmar Němcová, née Kuglerová, was born on 12 June 1930 in Hrušovany u Brna. Her father Jan worked as a postman, her mother Klotylda took care of the household. At the age of three, Dagmar and her parents moved to Brno because of her father’s profession. After the German occupation in 1939, her father, as a postman, distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. Thanks to his profession, he became friends with the Jewish Fischgrund family, whom he helped hide their property before their deportation to Terezín. Dagmar repeatedly experienced bombing in Brno, and then spent the final phase of the war at her grandfather’s home in Hrušovany, where she and her mother hid in a dugout. After the liberation the family had nowhere to return to, the original Brno apartment was destroyed by bombing and the family was assigned a new one after the Germans had been displaced. Dagmar trained as a shop assistant, and in the 1950s she furthered her education at a secondary school of commerce. From the 1950s until her retirement, she worked at the Pozemní stavby. Her whole life is connected with Brno, where she lived through the war, the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, the Velvet Revolution and where she was living at the time of the interview (2022).